Elliott S. Hall 1938(?)–

Automobile executive

Elliott S. Hall is commonly referred to as “Ford’s man in Washington” in his role as vice-president of governmental affairs for the Big Three automaker, a position he has held since 1987. He was the first African American to become a vice-president at the company, but prior to this juncture in his career, Hall enjoyed a distinguished career as a prominent attorney in Detroit. His name was even mentioned frequently as a possible successor to Detroit’s longtime mayor, Coleman A. Young, during the 1980s. However, Hall has excelled in his high-profile, powerful Washington job and has become active in numerous civic affairs in the nation’s capital, as he once had in his hometown. “You’d have to search high and low to find someone who didn’t respect him,” said the man who eventually succeeded Young, Dennis Archer, of Hall in a Detroit News interview in 1985. “He has a tremendous amount of integrity.”

Hall was born in the late 1930s in Detroit, the second youngest of eight children. His father was a steelworker employed at the Ford company’s Rouge River plant, for many years the largest industrial complex in the world. As a teenager, he sold newspapers and attended Chadsey High School on the city’s west side, where he excelled only on the track team. Poor grades caused him to graduate 267th among his 313 senior classmates, who nevertheless voted him Most Likely to Succeed. Hall then became the first person in his family to attend college, earning a bachelor’s degree from Detroit’s Wayne State University, where he worked in the school library for minimal wages. One summer, he wanted to apply for a temporary job at one of the auto plants, but his father cautioned him about working in the industry. “I wanted to get a summer job,” at the Rouge plant, Hall recalled in an interview with Black Enterprise writer Karen D. Gutloff. “My dad said no. He was afraid I’d start making money at Ford and not continue school.”

Black Panther Lawyer

After earning a law degree from Wayne State, Hall began his career as an attorney in the mid-1960s defending civil-rights cases. His name first appeared in the local media in 1970 when he successfully defended members of the local Black Panther Party who had been involved in a shoot-out with Detroit police; the incident occurred during an era of tense race relations in the city, and Hall was one of a number of rising African American attorneys and civil-rights activists renowned for their leftist beliefs and battles against a white political establishment. In 1972, he was elected to head the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)—at a time when it was the biggest chapter of the organization in the country— and was also active in a local group, the United Black Coalition. His prominence led to his appointment by Coleman Young, Detroit’s first African American mayor, in the first months of his mayoral administration in

At a Glance…

Born c. 1938, in Detroit, Ml; son of a steelworker and Ethel Hall; first marriage to Evelyn Hall ended in divorce; married Shirley Robinson Hall (a special-projects fundraiser for the Detroit Symphony Orchestra), c. 1970; children: (first marriage) Lannis, Frederick; (second marriage) Tiffany. Education: Received bachelor’s and law degrees from Wayne State University.

Career: Began career as an attorney in Detroit, 1965; corporation counsel for the city of Detroit, 1974–75; attorney in private practice, 1975–83; Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, chief assistant prosecutor, 1983–85; Dykema Gossett Spencer Goodnow and Trigg (law firm), Detroit, partner, 1985–87; Ford Motor Company, vice-president of governmental affairs, 1987-; served as president of the United Black Coalition and the Detroit chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), early 1970s.

Awards: Distinguished Alumnus Award, Wayne State University Law School.

Addresses: Office — Ford Motor Company, 1350 I St. NW, Washington, DC 20005–3323.

1974. Young named Hall as the city of Detroit’s corporation counsel, a job in which he suddenly found himself in charge of forty lawyers. Hall, his former rival in the election as head of the NAACP post, told the Detroit Free Press’s Ed Boyer at the time, “will make an excellent corporation counsel because he has guts, imagination, and access to a lot of good legal minds.” With his connections, Hall announced plans to encourage some of Detroit’s top law firms into providing advisory help for the embattled city, which faced numerous problems at the time. “Some law firms have made a lot of money from handling city business,” Hall told Boyer in the Detroit Free Press. “I think they’re willing to repay the city by providing free legal help.”

Hall’s appointment was part of a new era in the city of Detroit that was ignited by Young’s election—once the lawyer against Detroit police officers in the much-publicized Black Panther case, Hall was now the Police Department’s lawyer. He also planned to make the department more aggressive, not just a defensive body working to protect the city in the array of cases filed against it, and also told the Detroit Free Press that he wanted the department to begin filing suits against landlords who refused to rent to African American tenants, for instance. He vowed to return to private practice some day, but said he was happy to work for the public good for a time. “I’m a committed cat,” Hall told Boyer. “I don’t know where I got the bug from. I was born and raised here in Detroit, and everything I’ve got out of life I got out of this city.”

Founded Own Firm

Disappointingly, Hall spent less than a year on the job, and it was a year fraught with problems with the administration and press. “I was accustomed to making my own decisions,” Hall said of his brief stint in an interview with the Detroit News’s Brenda Ingersoll Gave in 1985. “And the confines of being a department head became unpleasant.” Hall returned to private practice, and eventually founded his own firm in Detroit. In 1983, he became the first African American chief assistant prosecutor for Wayne County, of which Detroit is the seat. His tenure in this high-profile job was marked by one notable, yet noble failure. Following a rash of shootings, Hall put forth a proposal to ban the sale and possession of handguns in Detroit in an effort to curb violent crime. However, the city administration and the general public, many of whom kept a legally obtained weapon for protection, soundly rejected the idea.

During the 1980s Hall was considered a viable mayoral candidate to succeed Coleman Young, who would go on to an unprecedented five four-year terms. But Hall, like many other prominent younger leaders in Detroit, vowed never to run against the man who had done so much for his career and for Detroit in general. In a 1985 interview with the Detroit News, Hall asserted that “I would never, ever run against the mayor. He’s been too good to me.”

Historic First at Ford

During the mid-1980s, Hall became a full partner at a top Detroit law firm, Dykema Gossett Spencer Goodnow and Trigg. His skills in the courtroom attracted the attention of Ford executives when he represented a half-dozen of the company’s executives who had been charged with unfairly conspiring to oust one of their own. The case was thrown out of court in 1986 as contrary to law, a ruling credited to Hall’s persuasive argument before the bench. In late 1987, he became vice-president of governmental affairs for Ford, the first African American to be hired at such a level at the company. He moved to Washington with his wife, a Democratic Party activist, and young daughter. (Hall also has two sons by his first marriage.) Hall’s move was viewed by some former colleagues and associates from Detroit with a bit of skepticism, for had made his career as the quintessential attorney, not corporate legal executive. “Sure, I agonized a bit,” Hall told Marcia Stepanek of the Detroit Free Press about his decision. “But the agony was over leaving Detroit.”

One of Hall’s first challenges was to help extricate, without losing money, Ford’s investment in a South African automaker. American companies were barred from doing business in South Africa as a result of official sanctions in protest of its harsh apartheid laws, which kept the country’s black majority in abysmal poverty. Hall, on behalf of Ford, argued that the company’s onetime payment of $61 million would preserve nearly 5,000 jobs at the South African Motor Corporations plant, many of them held by black workers. Hall earned some criticism from friends back in Detroit from his civil-rights days, but as he told the Detroit News’s Bryan Gruley, he viewed his new role at Ford as a means to achieve common good on a higher level. Admittedly, Hall told Gruley, he once opposed lobbying as “perhaps not quite ethical,” earlier in life, but now stood on the other side of the political fence. “One of the things you learn when you grow older… is that many elements have to exist in this system,” Hall remarked. “Ford employs 104,000 people, GM employs over 300,000. These businesses exist in our democratic system. They feed people, they feed families, they contribute to institutions.”

An Important Washington Player

In the interview with Gutloff in Black Enterprise, Hall explained the purpose of his job as Ford’s vice president for governmental affairs. “Due to the immense size of Ford Motor Co., there is rarely a time when there is no legislation pending in the U.S. Congress that does not impact in some way on company activity,” Hall said. “It is our job to prevent passage of legislation that adversely impacts the company and to encourage legislation that would enhance the economic growth and competitiveness of the auto industry.” Hall’s duties involve meeting with members of Congress and their staff; he also has had the ear of the President, officials from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, and doles out money from Ford to political action committees. His lobbying efforts have involved battling environmentalist and consumer-safety lobbying forces over pending gas-mileage and safety regulations for the auto industry, as well as working to improve the trade balance with Japan. Hall’s office, staffed by 26 lawyers, aides, and other associates, also oversees the leasing of Ford luxury vehicles to local politicians and White House staff members.

In Washington, Hall is known as a bridge-builder, not a hardball player like many top lobbyists for some of the nation’s most powerful corporations. “This town is about credibility,” Hall told Black Enterprises Gutloff. “I’ve found that having a relaxed, informed demeanor is more effective than the high-pressure, ‘I gotta have your vote, you’ve got to do this for me.’ I give a congressman or senator both sides of an issue. But of course, I tell them why they should choose my side.”

A political future back in Detroit seems unlikely for Hall, who sat on a District of Columbia committee charged with revamping the city’s troubled public-school system. He is also a member of the board of the Washington Performing Arts Society, the National Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Federal City Council, a private group of prominent Washingtonians. Such involvement continues Hall’s longtime commitment to social and economic justice, though it plays out on a different field than defending Black Panthers in court. “I figure I’ve got to give something back,” Hall told Gutloff in Black Enterprise. “There are too many of my brothers and sisters out there who do not have what I’ve been fortunate enough to acquire—an education and a series of decent places to work.”